ne or two subordinates and
the telephone.

"None of your Gas," he said, "all this. It's Real every bit of it. Hard
cash and hard glaze."

"Yes," I said, with memories of a carelessly read pamphlet in my mind,
and without any satirical intention, "I suppose you MUST use lead in
your glazes?"

Whereupon I found I had tapped the ruling grievance of my uncle's
life. He hated leadless glazes more than he hated anything, except
the benevolent people who had organised the agitation for their use.
"Leadless glazes ain't only fit for buns," he said. "Let me tell you, my
boy--"

He began in a voice of bland persuasiveness that presently warmed to
anger, to explain the whole matter. I hadn't the rights of the matter
at all. Firstly, there was practically no such thing as lead poisoning.
Secondly, not everyone was liable to lead poisoning, and it would
be quite easy to pick out the susceptible types--as soon as they had
it--and put them to other work. Thirdly, the evil effects of
lead poisoning were much exaggerated. Fourthly, and this was in a
particularly confidential undertone, many of the people liked to get
lead poisoning, especially the women, because it caused abortion.
I might not believe it, but he knew it for a fact. Fifthly, the
work-people simply would not learn the gravity of the danger, and would
eat with unwashed hands, and incur all sorts of risks, so that as my
uncle put it: "the fools deserve what they get." Sixthly, he and several
associated firms had organised a simple and generous insurance scheme
against lead-poisoning risks. Seventhly, he never wearied in rational
(as distinguished from excessive, futile and expensive) precautions
against the disease. Eighthly, in the ill-equipped shops of his minor
competitors lead poisoning was a frequent and virulent evil, and people
had generalised from these exceptional cases. The small shops, he
hazarded, looking out of the cracked and dirty window at distant
chimneys, might be advantageously closed....

"But what's the good of talking?" said my uncle, getting off the table
on which he had been sitting. "Seems to me there'll come a time when a
master will get fined if he don't run round the works blowing his girls
noses for them. That's about what it'll come to."

He walked to the black mantelpiece and stood on the threadbare rug, and
urged me not to be misled by the stories of prejudiced and interested
enemies of our national industries.

"They'll get a strik